I hate backstabbing, traitor, bluffing, cut-throat, conflict-type games, as does my wife and family--who are my playing partners (but usually just my wife--so should be good with just two). That is why I love Co-ops. But I have researched all the good co-ops so don't need recommendations there (although, if you have an obscure co-op you love, you might mention that, as I only know the popular ones that always get mentioned.) I dislike party games. Are there other good games that you love that have little or no conflict? I am willing to consider all types of games, but prefer Ameritrash over Euro. Oh, and not too long. 1.5 hours or less is ideal.

I do love a good thematic game and if you don`t want too much conflict, A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game is a nice fun adventure game. Kind of a shorter version of Arkham Horror but it has set of coop and competitive and team play rules. I love it, but alot of people are turned off by the art choice.

I do love a good thematic game and if you don`t want too much conflict, A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game is a nice fun adventure game. Kind of a shorter version of Arkham Horror but it has set of coop and competitive and team play rules. I love it, but alot of people are turned off by the art choice.

Can`t think of any other ones right now..

Once you really understand Carcassonne and actually play to win, there is a ton of backstabbing and screwage.

Carcassonne doesn`t have much backstab, unless you start going into the expansions like Carcassonne: Expansion 4 – The Tower. It`s a fun tile placement game, takes less than 60 minutes to play. Fun strategy and very simple to learn. Can`t think of any other ones right now..

Am I playing the same game as you? I don't play with expansions, and Carassonne is one of the nastiest games I've played. It can be played with little interaction, but what fun is that?

I would suggest: Navegador- other's players actions affect you in many ways, including the cost of buildings and market prices, but there is little direct screwage (you can't block the action someone wants to take, steal their resources, or anything like that.)

The Castles of Burgundy- the whole game is centered around taking tiles from a central board and placing them on your player board, so the only interaction is taking something someone else wants, and the turn order track mechanic with ship tiles.

One of my, as well as many other's, favorites that involves only indrect conflict is The Castles of Burgundy. Players use dice rolls to determine actions that help them to build their kingdom. There is no tearing down of what your opponent is building. The game is simply who builds the best kingdom.

Another one of my favorites is a route building/ card driven game called Thurn and Taxis. There is no blocking like there is in Ticket to Ride. Its more of a race in that there are objectives that give points, it's just that the player who finishes each objective first gets more points. Fun game, to me anyway.

Three of my favourite games, Bohnanza, San Juan, and TransAmerica, are all very "friendly" games. Friendly in the sense that there's virtually no way to "hurt" other players. However, each features plenty of ways to help opponents, so there's still considerable interaction in each.

San Juan is good with 2-4, TransAmerica with 3+, and Bohnanza is best with 5.

(And I second the caution about Carcassonne -- it's a great game, but it's very possible to play aggressively.)

The following games are a few as excellent with 2 as with 4, and fit the remainder of your criteria:

The Crayon Rails series of games is fantastic and has little to no interaction. It is longer, but pretty easy and turns go fast once you're in the swing of things. Start with Empire Builder.

Suburbia is great, and there's nothing you can do to screw over what your opponent is doing. At the same time, everything your opponents do has an impact on what you've built (in a positive way), so it has a surprising amount of interaction.

Galaxy Trucker has no player-to-player backstabbing, but it is hella difficult your first couple of plays. Incredibly fun. This is the only one that I don't know if it plays well with two. And I don't know, because we never have a shortage of people that want to play.

Heck, Runebound (Second Edition). You're mostly doing your own thing. Now, you can attack other players, and it may be in your best interest, but you can also...not attack other players, if you want. There's no reason a group with a mind to wouldn't simply cheer on one's fellow adventurers. Or root for the monsters without actually helping them.

My girlfriend and I play Merchants & Marauders with very little conflict, she usually is a merchant and I will raid the NPC characters or do merchant runs myself. The game is very flexible in that respect as well as having an awesome theme.

My job is not the day shift or the night shift, it's the always shift!

I will chop your head off!

LunarSoundDesign wrote:

My girlfriend and I play Merchants & Marauders with very little conflict, she usually is a merchant and I will raid the NPC characters or do merchant runs myself. The game is very flexible in that respect as well as having an awesome theme.

I actually hate playing this with my wife. She usually goes the route of the merchant, and I the pirate. Since we're also not fans of conflict in our games very often, she wins almost all the time since she just runs around trading goods while I take the harder different route. Maybe this is just me, but I haven't enjoyed the game as much because of this. I've come to the conclusion that you pretty much HAVE to attack merchants if you're a pirate in order to keep the game balanced.

My girlfriend and I play Merchants & Marauders with very little conflict, she usually is a merchant and I will raid the NPC characters or do merchant runs myself. The game is very flexible in that respect as well as having an awesome theme.

I actually hate playing this with my wife. She usually goes the route of the merchant, and I the pirate. Since we're also not fans of conflict in our games very often, she wins almost all the time since she just runs around trading goods while I take the harder different route. Maybe this is just me, but I haven't enjoyed the game as much because of this. I've come to the conclusion that you pretty much HAVE to attack merchants if you're a pirate in order to keep the game balanced.

I was just giving the op an option since both could be merchants which we sometimes do otherwise we play the cut throat variant and I attack the shit out if her if she does dumb stuff.

Navegador - Navegador is a brilliant game design. It plays really well at all play counts (including 2). It has no conflict, but it is high in interaction: timing for the best position at the Market, racing across the sea to discover new territories at cheaper prices, etc. And it's a very beautiful game to boot.

Puerto Rico - I can't help but notice that you don't have one of the greatest games ever created. It is well received because players build their own engines based on a system with very little luck. There is no conflict, per se, but there is fantastic interactions in role-selection and timing. There might be brief moments when players think, "Dang! I wanted to do that!" But what's nice is that, all players get to do what the first player does, it's just that sometimes being the one to do it first (and get a little bonus for it) makes a huge difference. PR plays fantastic at all play counts 2-5.

Peloponnes - Peloponnes is a quirky game. It doesn't have player-to-player conflict, but all players are trying to avoid the conflict that comes from the eminent, and inevitable appearance of all types of disasters. Players bid at the start of each round for a tile, so that's the only form of player-vs-player conflict you get. From there, it's all planning and juggling resources. I love having this game. There's no other like it and again, it plays well at all play counts, including 2.

One more thing I want to mention about your request: asking for a little-to-no conflict game, then stating a preference for Ameritrash games over Euro games makes things tricky. IMO, Ameritrash requires conflict (unless it's co-op of course).

But one more game came to mind as I thought of this:

Troyes - So, why Troyes? Well, if you really are an Ameritrasher, you like rolling dice. Troyes is the best Euro available for people who like rolling dice (IMO). Also, since you like co-ops, there is a phase at the start of each round where all players have to spend their hard-rolled resources to fend off enemies banging on the city walls. So you get a taste of co-op there. Don't get me wrong, it's a gamer's Euro game. It's abstracted. There are no minis to make it look pretty, etc. And there is a bit of a learning curve as you get used to what all the cards do. But there is a fantastic game of co-opetition going on under the surface. Now, many people will say that Troyes can be mean because players have the right to "buy" (it feels more like "steal" in the moment) dice from other players on their turns. But, the money that must be paid for the dice really does balance things out. As players improve, it is less "conflictive" and more like a very thinky, very gamey Euro with brilliant use of dice for all actions. What's more; every game feels different at it's core. I've played games that felt like a true co-op the whole time because of the way the enemy cards came out and comboed. I've played games that definitely felt a little back-stabby (being fully transparent here). I've played games that felt like I was playing single-player solitaire. But in every game, there is always tons great interaction (not always conflictive), and plenty to think about and plan out for your turns.

Sorry for the wall of text. I'm a huge fan of Troyes. I think it deserves a look in this case.